


the show must go on

by kickedshins



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Could Be Canon, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Light Angst, as is par for the course with kfam, ben arnold cares A Lot about people, flits wildly between banter and emotional conversations, set directly after the end of e91, suspend your disbelief as to how long a commercial lasts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23156329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickedshins/pseuds/kickedshins
Summary: “No, you don’t worry about me. I’m not gonna leave you alone after… everything that happened tonight. That’s not fair to you,” Ben says, and in his mind’s eye, Sammy can see Ben’s brows twitching downwards and his mouth hardening into a straight line made of clear-cut morals and caring too much about the people that he loves. “Yeah, maybe I have to fly out to Salem, Mass, but I’m not gonna leave you alone. You get that, right?”orAfter finding out that Jack Wright had the last copy of Death by Damnation, Ben and Sammy discuss flights to Massachusettes, contingency plans, and familial love.
Relationships: Ben Arnold & Sammy Stevens
Comments: 14
Kudos: 48





	the show must go on

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys i'm not actually caught up i'm on like episode 93 so if anything in this goes glaringly against canon i apologize! anyway it's the first kfam fic that i'm posting so hooray! this is extremely unbeta'd. also this is set Directly after the end of episode 91. enjoy :-)

“I’m sorry,” Sammy says. “What the fuck?”

But the line’s already fallen dead. Mr. X, the annoying dramatic bastard with his stupid obsession with mystery and disguised identity and ‘not enough time’, is gone.

Ben’s asking something, but Sammy isn’t sure what it is. And they’re on the air, but for some reason, no noise seems to be coming through Sammy’s headphones.

Sammy pinches his own arm in an attempt to wake himself up, to clear his mind. He has to stay alert. He can’t let things like this distract him if he’s going to be committed to this whole…  _ mission _ , as Ben sometimes calls it.

“What’d you say?”

Ben looks at him with a mix of pity and hard-edged excitement. “Asking you to confirm. Did you know anything about this?”

Sammy shakes his head no.

“We’re on the radio,” Ben reminds him.

“Oh. Uh, no, I don’t. Ben, can we just, y’know, cut to commercial, or–”

“Oh! Yeah, of course, my bad. Hang on, dear listeners, while we take a pause for the cause, alright?” He presses play for the next commercial that they have queued up, a much-too-long message from that pet psychic about getting dead animal spirits into communication, or something. But she paid for airtime, and that’s all that matters.

Sammy exhales, slinging his headset around his neck. “So what’s the plan?”

“Sammy,” Ben says, putting a hand on his arm. “We can, like, talk about this, if you want. We don’t need to go right into a plan.”

“No. No, you probably already have a plan, probably have some sort of contingency idea scribbled into your notebook or your Google Docs sheet about what to do in the case of my maybe dead fiancé having purchased a creepy-ass murder book that’s connected to the fucking shadow demons facilitating the destruction of a library by your girlfriend’s hand, right?” he says bitterly. It’s not that he resents Ben for his obsessive plans. It’s just that he’s upset and Ben is the only other person there and if he doesn’t take it out on someone else he might end up taking it out on himself.

“Hey. Shhh. Sammy, look. Look at me.”

Sammy does. It hurts to meet Ben’s eyes, but he does it. Ben is awful about maintaining eye contact, so the fact that he’s making an effort here makes Sammy’s heart twist even further in on itself.

“I can have a plan if you need me to have a plan, or we can make one together, okay? I think you already know that there’s no way for me to have pre-planned this. I think also that you don’t need to bring up the Emily thing, right? And, like, tone of voice, okay?”

“Right,” Sammy admits. “Yeah, sorry.”

“No problem. Now, how do you want to go about this?”

“What?”

  
“The book. If you don’t know anything about Jack’s copy, and I trust you when you say that you don’t, then what do we do about the one in Salem?”

“Um,” Sammy says, still trying to get his brain to catch up to where Ben’s has raced ahead to. As is often par for the course with conversations with Ben Arnold. (Once, at one of his biweekly brunches with Emily, they spent a whole fifteen minutes lovingly discussing how damn hard it is to hold him to a single train of thought if he isn’t talking about one of his all-consuming passions. Like notebooking. Or how much he hates raccoons.)

Ben’s still looking at him, tapping his foot a bit, and the commercial is going to run out soon, so they have a time limit, and Sammy’s taking too long to reply, and why didn’t he know about Jack’s copy? When did Jack buy it? Before or after he left?

If it was before, could Sammy have stopped everything, had he known? If he’d spent a little more time actually listening to Jack, entertaining his insanity, could he have gotten that book away from him? Would this all have gone down differently?

  
“Sammy! Sammy, you gotta calm down. Breathe, okay? Breathe.” Ben’s holding his shoulders and peering at his face with deep concern.

“Okay,” Sammy says, heart racing. He exhales. “Okay. Breathing.”

Ben counts slowly, and Sammy breathes in time with it. When his body is shaking a little less and when his vision’s a bit clearer, he unwinds his fingers from where they’ve found themselves gripping Ben’s wrists. It’s grounding to know that there’s another person there with him, though, so he pulls Ben in for a quick hug and then promptly pushes him back with a look that says  _ I really don’t want to get into it _ .

“Go,” Sammy says.

Ben looks confused. “What? Like, out of the station? Are you okay? For real? Are you mad at me?”

  
“Ben, no, that’s not what I mean. Thank you for helping me. It’s always better to have you around. I meant that you and Emily should go right now to Salem.”

“Not doing that. Not leaving you,” Ben says firmly.

“You have to, though. I mean, that dickhead of a–”

“ _ Sammy _ .”

“Mr. X,” Sammy says delicately, through gritted teeth, “said that you were the one who had to move quickly, didn’t he? To get the book?”

“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t come with me,” Ben says.

Sammy chuckles. “Do you expect me to think that you’d leave Emily at home with Lily?”

“Hey!” Ben protests. “I’m more secure in our relationship than that. She’d never cheat on me, if that’s at all what you’re implying. Plus, doesn’t Lily have Katie Lynch?”

“Pretty sure they’re not yet… exclusive,” Sammy says, not wanting to be the one to explain the concept of fuckbuddies to Ben Arnold if he doesn’t already know what it is. “If they ever become exclusive. And, okay, yes. Emily wouldn’t. She loves you way too much to screw you over. Especially with Lily. I mean, a downgrade of those proportions?”

Ben gives him a look.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. But, really, I know Emily won’t let you go without coming along. And you’re not gonna be able to say no to her. And I’m not gonna third wheel on that, Ben.”

“You know you wouldn’t be crashing anything, right? Like, it’s not a romantic getaway, or anything.”

  
“It’s still nice to have time alone with the person you love, though,” Sammy says. 

“Ah, so that’s why you’re staying,” Ben says, glint in his eye and smile on his lips. “So that you can spend time with Lily Wright.”

Sammy snorts with laughter. “Ben, if it hasn’t been made more than abundantly clear by now, both Lily and I are gay as they come.”

Ben makes a noise of frustration. “Yeah, buddy, I got that. Yes. No, I just mean that you love her in a sister way. She’s family to you, right?”

“I hope not. If she’s my little sister and you’re my little brother, then that leaves relationships with Emily looking pretty immoral from Lily’s point of view.”

“Shut up,” Ben says. “You can’t just joke away the fact that you care about her and wouldn’t want to leave her alone. For safety’s sake, at the very least.”

“For safety’s sake, at the very least,” Sammy agrees. 

“Thank you. Oh, shit. Show’s back in thirty seconds,” Ben says.

“Get outta here, then. Go home and get Emily and make plans and book a flight as soon as you can, okay? Preferably within the next two weeks?”

“I can’t leave y–”

  
“Yes, Ben, you can. Trust me on this, okay?” Sammy pats Ben’s cheek. “I got this. I _have_ to got this. Okay?”

“Have to got this,” Ben repeats.

“If you’re gonna insult my grasp of the English language, you’re gonna get the hell out of my station, Benjamin,” Sammy says through a smile. He drops his voice and his facade for a second, and says, “Go. Figure this out. Help make it better, okay?” His heart aches at the shape Ben’s mouth makes. Turning back to the mic, he says, “And we’re back! Folks, it’s just gonna be me for the rest of the night. I know, I know, it’s always a disappointment to not have Ben on, but he has some… important business to attend to.”

Ben looks torn between putting his headset back on and dashing for the door. The choice gets made for him, though, when Sammy casually kicks his feet up onto Ben’s seat and flicks off Ben’s mic and starts toying with Ben’s headset in his hands. He knows Ben wants to take care of him, but he also know Ben wants to continue unraveling this mystery, and only one of those seems to have a countdown attached to it.

“Go,” he mouths to Ben. “Be safe.”

“I love you!” Ben says to him.

“I love you, too,” Sammy mouths back. He’s worried about Ben and Emily and their safety, and he’s worried about Lily’s, too, without anyone else there to be there with her while Sammy finishes the show. Of course, Lily’s more than capable of holding her own, and he’s sure Ben and Emily can keep each other safe, but. But. He doesn’t need to lose anyone else he loves to this book and to the shadows for which it works. And if one good thing came out of being Shotgun Sammy, it’s that he’s pretty damn great at concealing how he actually feels on air. He takes a deep breath, puts on a smile that no one can see but that he’s positive everyone will be able to hear, and leans in towards the mic. “Folks, I’ll be taking calls in about ten minutes or so, so if you’ve got the burning desire to communicate with me, you know the drill. Hit me up on the phone lines at 424-279-3858. Or, I mean, you can try to get me at KingFallsSammy, but I’m gonna be honest with you, dear listeners. I still haven’t really gotten back into the habit of checking it, so your cries from over the internet might go woefully unanswered.”

He hears the closing of a door behind him. Though it goes against all the rules of radio, Sammy pulls out his phone to shoot a quick text to Ben and Emily, a reminder to stay safe and stay smart and to compare flight prices before purchasing because they should not be paying more than they have to for some mystery man’s attempt at spooking them with claims of the supernatural. 

“Alright. So, let’s see. How ‘bout that library, huh? Personally, I went through my own supply of books to find things that I could donate, and, dear listeners, let me tell you, it was a wild experience. Y’know, you never really understand how many useless things you have lying around until you have to discard them. I had all these books just taking up space that I never read any longer, but I never threw them out, because I’d convinced myself that I  _ might  _ reread them someday. Ridiculous,” he scoffs. “But I think that–”

The hotline rings. Sammy’s pulse increases threefold. He almost doesn’t pick it up, just in case it’s another Debbie scare, or Troy calling to say that Ben’s car took a tumble down the mountain, or Lily announcing that she’s moving out effective immediately due to hating him, or a plethora of other unlikely scenarios.

He lets the call come through. “Hello?”

“As interesting as this is,” Ben says, “I think you need a little help from your co-host right about now.”

“Ben! Isn’t it supposed to be the Sammy Solo Show for the rest of the night?”

“Aw, you know me. I couldn’t leave you or the listeners alone for more than a few minutes.”

“And we love you for that. What’re you doing?”

“Driving,” Ben says. “And, no, don’t worry, I don’t have my phone in my hands, or anything. It’s sitting in a cup holder on speakerphone. I’m very safe. A law-abiding citizen. And a pretty okay driver, I think.”

“I’m surprised you can see over the dashboard,” Sammy says.

“Ha, ha. Very funny. I’m surprised you… Uh, I’m surprised your legs can fit. In the car. Because you’re so tall.”

“Not your best work there, Ben.”

“Yeah. No, yeah, it wasn’t. Wait. Okay. I’m gonna pull over and give Lily and Emily each a text, and then I’ll come back on the hotline, is that alright?”

Sammy puts his head in his hands, a bit overcome with affection. “You don’t have to do that. I’m more than happy to steal the spotlight for a bit.”

“Oh, come on, Sammy. You know how bad I am about sharing. Do you want me to regale you with tales of Grease? With how I was rudely pushed off my deservedly-built pedestal at the peak of my prime? I have stories about Grease and spotlight sharing that would make Harrison fuckin’ Beauregard look like a paragon of selflessness.”

“Jack-in-the-box Jesus,” Sammy says. “We talked this out with Maggie two weeks ago, Ben. Besides, I know your stories. I’ve heard them all about seven times.”

“And you’ll hear them again!” Ben proclaims triumphantly.

“Alright, superstar. Cool your jets. Pull over and text Emily and Lily. While you’re off, I’m gonna take a caller, so, lovely people of King Falls, this is your last chance to get your calls in if you want to be on air with me.”

“And me!” Ben pipes up. “Once I get back on the air, that is.”

“You can just drive, Ben,” Sammy insists. “Don’t worry about me.”

“No,  _ you  _ don’t worry about me. I’m not gonna leave you alone after… everything that happened tonight. That’s not  _ fair _ to you,” Ben says, and in his mind’s eye, Sammy can see Ben’s brows twitching downwards and his mouth hardening into a straight line made of clear-cut morals and caring too much about the people that he loves. “Yeah, maybe I have to fly out to Salem, Mass, but I’m not gonna leave you alone. You get that, right?”

“I get that,” Sammy says.

“Fantastic. Love ya, see ya, bye!”

The hotline clicks off. Sammy sits in the quiet of the lonely station for a moment, smiling and still. But, as always, the show must go on, and Sammy’s been getting better and better at keeping himself moving in a healthy way. An overdose of stagnancy is dangerous.

He turns to the soundboard and presses a button. “Line four,” he says. “You are on the air with the Sammy and Ben show. What’s your story?”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading this thing i threw together at like seven in the morning pre-coffee! kudos/comments or coming to talk w me abt these messes @ commaperson on twt are always appreciated if you wish to brighten my day :D


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